Via Joystiq, a very worthy site that's sure to stoke the fires of nostalgia. VGMaps.com is an altas for games old and new, with extremely impressive stitched together screenshot displays. Some of my personal favorites include Zebes, The Maniac Mansion, and the FFI Overworld.

ChipGuy writes "Om Malik points out the launch of Sony PSP in US could actually turn Sony's fortunes around and thinks that new unqiue applications like Sajeeth Cherian's latest software, PSP Video 9, might be the real reason. Cherian created Videora bit torrent client's new hack, PSP Video 9. It takes any video and turns it into a format that PSP can read. So now you can download videos using Videora, and then convert them to PSP friendly format within a few seconds.He calls this PSP casting."

An essay discussing the frustrations of the pre-order graces the pages of GameGirl Advance today. From the article: "I have had explained to me this morning, very pleasantly by an earnest young man, how there will be no PSPs available for drop-in customers on Thursday, and how, because of this, if I haven't pre-ordered, I won't be getting one for months, windfall tax refund or not."

jefu writes "According to this story the state of North Carolina may be considering banning solitaire on state owned machines. It seems that state workers are now perceived as having replaced leaning on brooms with playing solitaire or minesweeper. The story provides coverage of both sides of the issue, noting that playing solitaire (or other games) may provide workers with a way to burn off some stress, but that this kind of activity is likely to be perceived as time wasting. My favorite bit (especially as April 15th draws ever closer) is where the author notes that fifty percent of the time an IRS employee is on the computer they are playing games, shopping online or gambling."

Gamespot has a thoughtful and interesting piece up entitled Everything is Possible, where they interview several game designers with a strong storytelling background. The interviewees include Chris Avellone (Planescape: Torment), Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear), Ken Levine (System Shock 2), Tim Schafer (Grim Fandango), and Ragnar Tørnquist (The Longest Journey). These gaming luminaries discuss the finer points of creating a plot in an interactive universe, and it makes for a fantastic read. From the article: "Ken Levine: I'll never forget the first story I wrote in gaming. It was for a (eventually canceled) Star Trek: Voyager game. I wrote the opening cutscene, which included this gem: THE CAMERA ZOOMS IN ON JANEWAY...WE SEE A LOOK OF TERROR IN HER EYES AS IT REFLECTS THE INCOMING MISSILE The lead programmer pretty much laughed in my face. First of all, our characters were low-resolution bitmaps, with one fixed expression on their face. Their eyes were maybe 4x4 pixels each. The camera zooming in on that wouldn't have shown a performance; they would have shown a scattered mess of random pixels."

Hit quirky game Katamari Damacy will be coming to the Nintendo DS sometime in the near future, according to Joystiq. From the article: "The game is listed under Namco's planned DS titles. Squint hard at the top of the image, and you'll see it. Get that stylus ready. You're going to be pushing around a world of crap with it, soon enough." At the same time, GamesAreFun.com has information about the DS Wireless Service, which is going to be hosted partially by Gamespy.

Gamespot has coverage of the appearance on an official Korean Xbox site of a "Halo 2 X-Pack". The possible expansion is another possible way for Bungie and Microsoft to get the heavily foreshadowed ending to fans of the series. From the article: "Such a Halo 2 expansion could be a twofold boon for Microsoft, adding another incentive for gamers to join its online service and squeezing further dollars from the nearly 7 million gamers who already have Halo 2."

JonLatane writes "Some of you old Penny Arcade fans may recall a time when Gabe and Tycho were planning to publish their work, only to lose the rights to all their stuff to some scumbag. Well, Gabe said today in the bottom of his post that they have gotten back the rights to their own work. This means that we may finally see some new printed works, especially since Gabe and Tycho are much more legally savvy as a result of this whole fiasco."

Alarash writes "Blizzard just announced that its latest video game (and first MMO), World of Warcraft reached 1.5 millions of subscribers world-wide. Blizzard is now second only to NCSoft (over 5 millions users spread on Lineage, Lineage II and City of Heroes) according to the MMOG Chart."

The Game Developer's Rant session held at the GDC continues to reverberate through the industry. GameDev.net and Greg Costikyan's site have more details on the session itself, while Terra Nova's original thread on the subject has been followed up by an open letter to the participants from Matt Mihaly of Iron Realms Entertainment. From Matt's letter: "Anyway, please, just stop the whining. Stop telling people about how horrible the games industry is. Stop telling them that they can't succeed without radical industry changes. It's bunk and you should know better. Are you intentionally trying to discourage people from getting into the industry?"

GamesIndustry.biz has commentary from Square producer Shinji Hashimoto about the upcoming FFVII movie Advent Children, and the second Kingdom Hearts game. From the interview: "To be honest, all of the staff was burnt out after we made the original Final Fantasy VII! But as you know, Final Fantasy has both a game part and a movie part - and as we made the movie part, we decided to make it longer, because it's so connected to the game part. We don't really think of it as a feature film. It's more like a collection of clips; it's become quite long, but we don't take that too seriously in terms of having a massive concept behind it or anything like that. It's just naturally come about."

The ongoing trend of legislating the sale of video games moves forward. Gamasutra has news on the Illinois law currently moving through the legislature, which apparently has "overwhelming support". From the Illinois debate: "An industry that is making so much money selling these things to your children is dealing with things like decapitation, defecation on people. There's vivid pictures of nudity. It's an industry that needs help being policed..."

TheSpoom writes "Three Rings, developers of Puzzle Pirates, a recently mentioned MMORPG, has released their Java game toolkit (a.k.a. Narya) under the GPL and are providing free hosting for games developed in it on GameGardens. Want to create your own multiplayer puzzle game? This might be a great way to get started."

Despite Mark Rein's recent statements to the contrary, GamesIndustry.biz has word that Activision, THQ, and Take Two are all indicating that they may be charging $59.99 for next gen titles. From the article: "This strategy is likely to see a two-tier structure emerging for game pricing, where premium titles command a premium price point of $59.99 or more, while less important games are sold for between $39.99 and $49.99 - much closer to the current price point."

Eurogamer.com has an editorial discussing the "HD Future", as revealed in the Microsoft Keynote at GDC. In the article, author Kristan Reed argues that while the crispness of the HD Living Room would be welcome, "using it as a hook to hang next gen console gaming on is misleading to say the least, and there are more than a few barriers to entry for the masses."

nickmontfort writes "In Mystery House Taken Over, a group of us reverse-engineered and reimplemented Mystery House, the 1980 Sierra game. With some others, we've created eight "occupied" houses (remakes and mods of the original) and provided a downloadable kit (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) and a web-accessible system to let people easily create their own versions."

The first details of the Xbox Live 2.0 service were revealed at the Game Developer's Conference by Microsoft VP J. Allard. Now GamesIndustry.biz has a discussion on the possibility that end user made content may be a part of the micropayment economy mentioned in the keynote. From the article: "...allowing players to create and trade their own in-game items, although presumably the game would have to provide some creative tools for this to be possible in the first place, so we wouldn't expect it to be a feature of every title."

aderack writes "The first issue of The Gamer's Quarter, a magazine that tries to take a more literary approach to videogames than do current publications, has been released in .pdf format. Included are fourteen lengthy articles, each with a unique perspective; one piece looks at the cultural meaning of Katamari Damacy, while another piece speaks of the writer's gradual acceptance of death as a learning tool."

indiejade writes "Yahoo! recently launched its take on the virtual fantasy-prediction game market. The Tech Buzz Game allows players to invest in what they think will be the "next big thing" RE high-tech products, trends, or concepts. CNet reported that the game was announced at the now-in-progress Emerging Technologies Conference in San Diego. The players with the three highest scores accumulated in the game between now and July 29th will win one of various Apple products."

inflex writes "With the recent AU-US Federal trade ageement coming into force, the first signs of what is to come have started appearing with Sony unleashing a legal bid to clamp down on previously legal mods chips in Australia."